Evaluation of Urban Form and Automobile Dependence A Case Study of Marne-la-Vallée New Town (Paris-France)

Automobile dependence is one of the most important symptoms of modern cities which have negative impacts on environmental, social, and economic aspects. The impacts such as injuries in accidents, air, water, and soil pollution, noise, townscape perturbation, traffic jams, and waste of time and energy are more known examples. In order to establish efficient strategies and policies to improve the situation, a complete and detailed evaluation of automobile dependence is necessary. The objective of the research is to evaluate the new town of Marne-la-Vallée in the east of Paris in France as the case study from the "automobile dependence" viewpoint. This research also confirms that the theory of "conceptual combinations of three urban fabrics" developed by Peter Newman is applied in this new town. As explained in this theory, usually in a metropolis the urban form is classified into three distinct urban fabrics: the first one is "walking urban fabric" which contains the core of the city, the second one is "transit urban fabric" which contains inner and outer urban fabrics and finally the third one "auto urban fabric" which is relatively automobile-dependent urban fabric. With a total population of 311851 in 2015, this new town has been planned as a hub of employment and residence in Parisian suburb. Marne-la-Vallée is formed by 4 sectors of (1) Porte de Paris, (2) Val Maubuée, (3) Val-de-Bussy, and (4) Val-d'Europe, which are consisted of 26 "communes". The key literature of automobile dependence is investigated in 6 dimensions: compactness/sprawl of urban fabric, accessibility to urban centers, sustainable transportation, population density, urban fabric clustering, and accessibility of green and open spaces, in each dimension a set of parameters has been defined and quantified to evaluate the state of automobile dependence related to the urban fabric. In this research, quantitative method has been used and data collection has been carried out with the assistance of the INSEE (The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) database. The findings show that the new town of Marne-la-Vallée is relatively automobile-dependent and this dependency is a dependent variable of "distance from center" (Paris), which means the further away from the center, the more the rate of automobile dependence in 6 investigated dimensions.  Finally, in a spider chart, the result of car dependence is shown separately for each of the four parts of this new town. Despite the objectives of the planners for this new town, the urban form of Marne-la-Vallée is not successful according to sustainable urban transportation and automobile dependency concept. Also, the typical principles and rules concerning other suburbs are present here and this new town has to take the necessary measures to resolve the problem of automobile dependence.